Morederlands: 87 Bazillion Mins Of Borderlands: Pre-Sequel

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Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel this, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel that. Personally I’m waiting for Borderlands: The Post-Sequel, which is like regular Borderlands but without lyrics. For now, though, Pre-Sequel looks a fair deal like regular Borderlands, except it’s moon-flavored. That means enemies that freeze and shatter, low-gravity airborne (not to be confused with Battleborn) antics, and other such space-defacing shenanigans. Also, you won’t actually find 87 bazillion minutes of footage below. Only 14. But close enough.

There are definitely some cool tidbits in there – for instance, the ability to evolve one character into his Borderlands 2 form by picking a certain progression path. I also like the fact that you’re not the only one using the lack of gravity as a weapon; enemies can go careening through the un-clouds too – and potentially up and over cover. It’s a simple change, but I imagine it will really vary up the pace of combat a lot in places.

This is definitely still Borderlands, though. You need not worry about sudden, whiplash-inducing changes to the basic formula. You still shoot dudes and monsters and Internet references dead, and they drop shiny things to make you even better at making everything else dead. It is, as Mufasa told Simba while they gunned down a bunch of hyena bandits on the sun, the circle of whatever.

Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel will be out on October 14th. One week prior, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Alien: Isolation, Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor, and Project Spark will all come out on the same day for some reason. Girdle your wallets, brave RPSfolk. I fear some of us might fall in the Battle For An Extremely Arbitrary Week ahead, but the rest of us will sing their song and append a cryptic subtitle to their name. It’s the least we can do.

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“Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel will be out on October 14th. One week prior, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Alien: Isolation, Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor, and Project Spark will all come out on the same day for some reason” Oh yes, companies love to release several hyped up games at the same day, as if they relished in the clusterfuckedness that will then ensue. There are 12 months in year, but don’t let that irrelevant fact stop you from releasing your games at the same bloody day.

What puts me off a little aside from all the recycling is the apparent loot mechanics.

Let me elaborate further: there is a nifty savegame editor for BL2 that lets you find any possible weapon combination, and the results are underwhelming compared to BL1. More balanced, less crazy, but sure as hell less varied.

As a random example: Torgue legendary shotgun. You can edit which manufacturer made which kind of part, like the scope or the stock, for example, but all it changes aside from looks is the weapons quality. Since it’s Torgue, you can’t change the element either. A Vladof rifle with ONLY Vladof parts will perform better than a mixed bag, but it’ll be mostly the same.

This kind of thing is what gets randomized, and some options are even locked, especially the elemental properties with legendaries being the worst offender, offering even less randomness with locked barrels. At most you’ll manage to make them shoot a small spray instead of a single shot.

You’ll never be able to tweak ANY weapon to perform too far from what was intended, leaving the weirdest creations to hand crafted “uniques”, mostly found in DLCs. And this is not a limit of the tool either: If you don’t believe me, just tip Moxxy endlessly to get a shitload of her SMGs, you’ll notice that the only variation is a small difference is stats from one to another.

You’ll never find completely shitty and useless weapons that don’t shoot like you’re imagining they should, but the opposite is also true, the awe of finding an absolutely OP random combination of awesome properties is not possible either.

All this rant only to say that i don’t believe Gearbox will shake things up here, aside from adding a couple more weapon types, which is obviously welcome. I never found a single source of them saying they’ll go back to the “mad” route of yore, at least.